Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Introduction to Theatre
& Performance
LECTURE 2 TEXT AND PERFORMANCE
2.3 Dialogue
DIALOGUE
• When one character speaks to another, he or
she sends a message – about their thoughts or
what they did or their situation – to the other
character, who receives this message. This
onstage communication is another message –
one being sent from the stage to the audience
– again about character, action and
circumstances, but always slight different from
that between character and character
Functions of dialogue (what does it
deliver to the audience/reader)
• Conversational exchanges between characters
• Information as to time and place (intradialogic
information)
• Information on action (what has happened
elsewhere)
• Actual enactments (like accusations and
confessions)
• Information about characters (how they speak
and what about; what is said of others)
Exposition
• Information that came before or happened
elsewhere
• When delivered by a character, exposition is
information about the situation and previous
action, and implicit information about the
character. Most expositions also deliver the
character's perspective
• If the characters explain too much background
information related to the plot of the story, most
audiences will feel that too much exposition
weakens the storytelling process
Character 'voice'
• How the character speaks: Ideolect and
Socioect
• Ideolect
– a person's particular way of speaking
• Sociolect
– a shared style of speaking – helps establishes
character's social origins or status
Structural dynamics of dialogue
• A great deal of drama uses suspense to engage an
audience.
• Dramatic irony occurs when the audience knows
more or additional information than any one
person in the fictional world.
• Suspense works in the opposite direction –
someone knows the truth but that is us just now.
The revelations comes, we feel release.
• Both withheld exposition and anticipated action
create suspense. And both are in the creation of
dialogue.
Subtext
Conversation
• Speech Acts – J.L. Austin
• Two kinds of utterances
– Constative utterances – stating facts
– Performative utterances – doing something
with words (eg. Commands, vows)
Conversation
• Speech Acts – J.L. Austin
• 3 kinds of speech acts
– locutionary act – uttering something meaningful
• The surface meaning
– illocutionary act – the act performed in saying
something‐ embodies the intention of the speaker
• The implied meaning
– perlocutionary act – effects produced on the
hearer by saying it
• The effect